| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Cratylus by Plato: precise conclusion. But we shall not be far wrong in placing the Cratylus
about the middle, or at any rate in the first half, of the series.
Cratylus, the Heracleitean philosopher, and Hermogenes, the brother of
Callias, have been arguing about names; the former maintaining that they
are natural, the latter that they are conventional. Cratylus affirms that
his own is a true name, but will not allow that the name of Hermogenes is
equally true. Hermogenes asks Socrates to explain to him what Cratylus
means; or, far rather, he would like to know, What Socrates himself thinks
about the truth or correctness of names? Socrates replies, that hard is
knowledge, and the nature of names is a considerable part of knowledge: he
has never been to hear the fifty-drachma course of Prodicus; and having
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Prufrock/Other Observations by T. S. Eliot: I do not think that they will sing to me.
I have seen them riding seaward on the waves
Combing the white hair of the waves blown back
When the wind blows the water white and black.
We have lingered in the chambers of the sea
By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown
Till human voices wake us, and we drown.
Portrait of a Lady
Thou hast committed--
Fornication: but that was in another country,
And besides, the wench is dead.
Prufrock/Other Observations |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from An Inland Voyage by Robert Louis Stevenson: large as to have laid itself out for travellers, you stand so far
apart from the business, that you positively forget it would be
possible to go nearer; you have so little human interest around
you, that you do not remember yourself to be a man. Perhaps, in a
very short time, you would be one no longer. Gymnosophists go into
a wood, with all nature seething around them, with romance on every
side; it would be much more to the purpose if they took up their
abode in a dull country town, where they should see just so much of
humanity as to keep them from desiring more, and only the stale
externals of man's life. These externals are as dead to us as so
many formalities, and speak a dead language in our eyes and ears.
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